Aaron and Konstantin (AKA – DeCosta) are two volunteers from Germany who’re spending 1 year at the Gorus farm in Nanegaon. They will be sharing their experiences during their stay here at the Gorus Farm. Below is in their own words, the first blog post from them.

We are Konstantin and Aaron and we came to India this August for voluntary work on the Gorus Farm in Nanegaon. We saw this as a big chance to learn a lot of things about agriculture and the fascinating country – India.

And already now after almost four months we recognized that it is the grand opportunity we hoped it would be. During our daily life (we spend most of our time on the new fields) we learn so many new things related to designing new fields, building permanent beds, planting and aquaculture.

The first week on the Farm was a little bit difficult for the two of us because the people and their language, the work combined with the monsoon rains – all this was new for us. But after some time we acclimatized ourselves to our new environment. Now we are absolutely happy that we are here and we are very excited about the near future because there are so many nice plans and ideas.

We live directly on the farm and have our food with the family who is also living here. I think this is one of the reasons we feel so included in this whole project. It’s for example very nice that we can celebrate festivals with the people here on the farm so we have the chance to get to know India much better and faster than most tourists.

Especially together we enjoy the work outside, talking, listening to music or just get lost in your thoughts during work. And all the time there is at least one of the two farm dogs – Tara and Chandu – around us and watching us work.

At the moment we are planting seedlings in the permanent beds we have started to build around two months ago. For the beds we used old roof tiles to define the beds and walk ways. Inside them we put woody shrubs, weeds, compost and soil. In these beds we are planting tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes and basil – just to mention a few of all the coming plants.